Phish Tour Continues In Chicago: Night 2 – Setlist & Recap

The second Saturday night of this fall’s Phish tour brought the band back to Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois for the second of three Chicagoland shows. Phish spit fire on a night in which they focused heavily on arena rock at the no frills venue. Improvisationally, Saturday’s concert was all about a 25+ plus minute “No Men In No Man’s Land” featuring plenty of the “egalitarian” jamming that has become a hallmark of 2018 Phish.

Many fans who attended Friday’s concert had to deal with long waits to get into the venue. Thankfully, at least anecdotally, Allstate Arena staff were better prepared on Saturday and traffic flowed more smoothly into the room formerly known as the Rosemont Horizon. Phish’s Saturday night concert at the Allstate was their seventh at the venue dating back to a historic Halloween show in 1995. The Allstate Arena isn’t exactly known for its acoustics, yet Phish’s team did a great job with the sound in Rosemont. Fans packed nearly every inch of the arena in creating a wave of energy that pulsated with every twist and turn the band made throughout the night.

Phish led off with “Stash” for the first time since July 22, 2015 and just third time since 1995. The quartet was in lockstep from the opening note through the final note of a “Stash” loaded with tension and release style jamming. Bassist Mike Gordon threw interesting melodies into the mix, while guitarist Trey Anastasio directed the band through a jam section that flirted with Type II territory yet never actually crossed the song’s normal boundaries. Next up was the tour debut of “Dogs” off Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House – a Disney album of sound effects for the which the band provided their own soundtrack that they debuted on Halloween 2014 in Las Vegas. Anastasio got a huge kick out of keyboardist Page McConnell trigging samples of the sound effects from the original at unusual spots. “Blaze On” filled the three slot and featured the best full band improvisation of the set. Phish worked over the typical “Blaze On” solo with a fury before drummer Jon Fishman led a move into a deep and euphoric groove that included knocks on his woodblocks throughout. Fish provided a base off which Anastasio, McConnell and Gordon exchanged riffs. One of the best parts of the “Blaze On” jam came when the quartet hooked up on an ascending pattern of notes they used as the basis for a build to a crowd-pleasing climax.

The first set continued on Saturday with the arrangement of “Water In The Sky” that starts with a descending piano figure played by McConnell. As always, the “filter out the Everglades” lyric received a roar from those who attended the band’s New Year’s Eve festival at Big Cypress at the end of 1999. While the “Vultures” that followed the tour debut of “Ya Mar” had a bit of a ragged start, Phish pulled it together for a rousing conclusion to one of the best songs to come out of the massive batch of material the band debuted in 1997 and 1998. The four-piece band had no such issues working through their first cover of Ween’s “Roses Are Free” since last year’s Baker’s Dozen residency at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Anastasio couldn’t contain his energy as he was jumping up and down as he delivered the song’s signature riff. The frame came to a close with more fretboard fireworks from the guitarist during a pairing of “46 Days” and “David Bowie.” While the former was a mere eight minutes long, Phish made the time count as they engaged in more tension and release jamming to the delight of the crowd. The Vermonters seemed to rush through the latter, which contained a particularly potent peak for a 3.0 “Bowie.”

The second of the evening’s two unusual set openers was “The Moma Dance” that kicked off the closing stanza. Only five of the dozens of versions of “Moma Dance” played since 2009 have come within the second set. “The Moma Dance” is one of two songs performed last night off Phish’s 1998 studio album The Story Of The Ghost, which was released 20 years to the day prior. Though Phish kept between the lines for “Moma,” the “No Men In No Man’s Land” that followed was the improvisational centerpiece of the concert. Last night’s take was a must-hear “No Men In No Man’s Land” in which the band had plenty of chances to pull the plug yet kept digging into the multi-faceted jam. Periods of five minutes would pass without any member of the band soloing as they continued their egalitarian ways. While no one musician was leading the action, the jam was far from directionless as Phish touched on ambiance, funk, arena rock, buttery bliss, psychedelic reggae and spacey territories over the course of the instant classic “No Men.” A particularly impressive segment of the jam came just before a transition into “Steam” as the band laid the ground work for a spot-on move into the Anastasio/Marshall classic. This was “Team Phish” at its absolute best with many jaws agape at the band’s improvisational prowess.

Phish LD Chris Kuroda gets better with age and the way he directed the rig with its moving trusses was brilliant on Saturday. “Steam” was a fine example of what the Phish lighting rig is capable of this tour. The trusses were on the move throughout the entire song, yet didn’t take attention away from the musicians. While “NMINML” was filled with moments where Phish could have moved on to the next time yet decided to jam more, “Steam” had just reached an interesting space when Anastasio fired up “Chalk Dust Torture.” The quartet played the A Picture Of Nectar rocker straight and did the same with the title track of 2014’s Fuego. Phish took a breather in the form of the gorgeous ballad “Joy” before firing up the crowd with “Suzy Greenberg” to bring the second set to a close. The band honored Lou Reed, who died five years to the day earlier, by romping through “Rock And Roll” as the evening’s encore. Phish concludes the Allstate Arena run tonight. A webcast is available via LivePhish.com.

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